New artwork!

[SRD art]

Here's another dream car of mine. When I left Florida for design school in the mid 90's all I had to drive was my street/strip 73 Nova. Was a fun car to drive but with 560hp, 4.56 gears, and 4500 stall converter it wasn't exactly something I wanted to drive across country to be my college commuter. A friend of the family had a broken down 84 Chevette that had 83,000 miles on the clock and needed about $300 worth of work to get it driveable. I decided to buy it, got it running, and managed to keep it running for another almost 90,000 miles until it finally gave up the ghost. It was SLOW but got 33 mpg and was still a fun car to drive, especially after I lowered it 3". Here it is pictured lowered with 17" wheels and 205-40-17s.



So as I was getting close to the end of design school I started making plans for the "cheVETTE". These cars are actually a great project as they're already rear drive and weigh only around 1900-2000 lbs. They also share the same front suspension as Fieros so there's a lot of aftermarket parts available, including drop spindles, tubular control arms, coil over conversions, and 13" brakes. Plans for mine included a boosted aluminum LS motor, full suspension upgrade, and tubbed to fit 335-30-18's out back. Here's a photo of the car when 1968CamaroSS Sam from the forum stopped by with his 335's to see what I was up against.



Besides the monstrous rear tires and 204-40-17s on 17x7 Boyds, for styling changes I wanted to smooth the body just a little. I wanted to get rid of the ugly front bumper (See below) and put on something smoother that integrated the front air dam. That meant moving the parking lights so I placed them in the grille. I removed the outdated side marker lights and added a modern import style units closer to the door as well as more modern mirrors. Door handles were changed to vertical units and an aluminum wing was added on the back for a little more aerodynamics at higher speeds. Colors are 'Vette Sunset Orange Metallic and black, guess I got a thing for orange and black cars.





I suppose I wanted something that I could tease all the fast and fart pipe tuner boys that at a quick glance seemed to fit in with them, but also something that could play with the Euros in the canyon and American big boys on the autocross and drag strip. Unfortunately it got to the point that I had too many "to-be-done" projects and not enough room to store them so the Vette had to go. Another "someday I wanna..." project. Enjoy the art!